Little Orphan Annie, Volume 2: The Darkest Hour is Just Before the Dawn, 1927-1929

Little Orphan Annie: The Complete Daily Comics #2

by Harold Gray

Little Orphan Annie - the original female comics hero - takes on chiseling business men and a gang of thieves, armed only with her sharp wit and a good left hook. Then she helps her surrogate parents by nursing "Daddy" Warbucks to health and helping save the Silos' family farm. And only that little chatter-box could become a cross between Robinson Crusoe and Dr. Doolittle when she and Sandy are shipwrecked on a deserted island.

Enjoy all the unique adventure and earnest charm of Volume Two in The Library of American Comics presentation of Little Orphan Annie, containing nearly 1,000 comic strips from October 1927 to November 1930.

Genres: Comic Strips, Comics, Graphic Novels, Adventure

321 pages, Hardcover

First published September 29, 2008

About the author

Harold Lincoln Gray was an American newspaper artist and cartoonist.

Gray grew up on a farm near the small town of Chebanse, Illinois. He graduated from Purdue University with a degree in engineering, but as an artist, he was largely self-taught. A former letterer for Sidney Smith on The Gumps, he came up with a strip idea in 1924 for Little Orphan Otto. The title was quickly altered by Chicago Tribune editor Joseph Medill Patterson to Little Orphan Annie.
By the 1930s this strip had evolved from a crudely-drawn melodrama to a crisply rendered atmospheric story with novelistic plot threads. The dialogue consisted mainly of meditations on Gray's own deeply conservative political philosophy.
Gray sometimes ghosted Little Joe (1933-72), the strip by his assistant (and cousin) Ed Leffingwell which was continued by Ed's brother Robert. Maw Green, a spin-off of Annie was published as a topper to Little Orphan Annie. It mixed vaudeville timing with the same deeply conservative attitudes as Annie.
Harold Gray was a charter member of Lombard Masonic Lodge #1098, A.F. & A.M. in 1923.

Reviews

[Brent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another fantastic volume from the Library Of American Comics!

Harold Gray really captures a sense of time and presence.

[Carl Waluconis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This volume contains Harold Gray's appealing artistic style maturing. However, the stories are somewhat wordy, with the word balloons often seeming to threaten to cover the characters. Also, for exciting adventures, the stories from the thirties were among the best. These tales have some adventure, but contain mainly philosophy and morals, showing Gray's views on politcal issues of the time such as farming and the state of banking. Gray expresses these through Annie often talking to herself or her dog, Sandy, which seemed to be an important part of the strip's large popularity. In those times, newspaper strips stood front and center in American popular culture. For a look at sociological values and life in the time period, they are invaluable.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Harold Gray's Little Orphan Annie, in my opinion, is the best continuity strip ever. Having first read several of her stories in the long out-of-print "Arf! The Life and Hard Times of Little Orphan Annie, 1935-1945," I am thrilled to see IDW and the Library of American Comics reprint the series from the beginning.

[Dominick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume features what is perhaps Gray's lamest way of separating Annie from Warbucks: she goes for a walk and ... gets lost, ending up being taken by a kindly cabbie and his wife. Gray's inchoate politics are well on display here, with a weird tension between support for organizing (Annie even goes on strike against a stingy employer, and there's a sequence in which Warbucks convinces Silo that farmers organizing is essential to their best interests) and individualism, and between the notion of standing on your own two feet and being charitable to those not as well off as you are. Some plots seem rather abruptly tied off, notably the Blunderville sequence. A lot of strips are designed to punch up a specific moral. ON the other hand, Gray's forward narrative momentum is really developing--I found myself wanting to keep reading, even through the sequences between adventure (e.g. When Warbucks is recuperating from a plane crash, and Annie mostly just wanders around in the country), and Gray's art is very much hitting its stride. Some strips haver evidently been taken from not great sources, presumably the best available, but overall the production value is high.

[J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ahh, nostalgia for the 50's and spreading the Chicago Tribune out on the living room floor to read the comics. Dick Tracy and Little Orphan Annie with their intricate plots and wonderful violence. Now a days, Dick Tracy is a ghastly joke of a strip with incompetent writing and even worse art work. Publication of a daily Orphan Annie strip ceased last month.

But any fan can get back into that world with this wonderful series of books with all the daily strips for two years and many of the Sunday panels. Continuous stories instead of chopped up episodes like from other anthologies. Of course, the constant monologues on the value of work and self reliance can get pretty boring. One keeps wishing the Asp and Punjab would show up. Bit "Daddy" can still get in there and clear out a cellar full of gangsters armed only with a hatchet. And there are surprises, like Daddy promoting unions (!) and government programs for Farmers. Well, that will all change when FDR gets elected.

Darn, when will the Asp and Punjab show up? Must be patient.

[Fizzgig76 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Little Orphan Annie helps raise the Pewters as a newspaper girl, fights for her wages as a waitress, is kidnapped by robbers, is reunited with Daddy Warbucks only to lose him again as he tries to rebuild his fortune, tries to keep her friend from being abused, and uncovers a money laundering scheme while working at a bank. The interesting thing about Little Orphan Annie is that she seems to stand for the average man at the time. Her stories usually revolve around the problems of the working class (just ignore the fact that she's probably only 10 and continuously gets jobs held by adults). The art is interesting, if not minimal, and the dialogue is fun and catchy.